DIY Peppermint Lip Scrub

When I ran out of my much loved (and slightly eaten) Lush bubblegum lip scrub, I looked at the price to purchase it (as I stole it off my sister) and I was shocked! Lush are charging £5.25 for 25g of lip scrub wahhh?! I can buy a kg of sugar for less than that! And so my quest to find a lip scrub recipe over the grand old tinternet began. 

Pretty much all lip scrubs use the same ingredients, sugar, olive oil and usually some sort of flavoring. Here I would like to share with you, the recipe I use to cook up my own scrub. 

You will need:

• 1tsp Olive oil. This is the main 'conditioning' element of the mixture, adding Olive oil makes sure your lips stay silky soft and smooth.

• 5g Caster sugar approx. This is the exfoliating part, Caster sugar is very fine so it's not too harsh on the skin but still makes sure your lips are exfoliated. 

• 1/2 tsp Honey. You don't have to add this but I like to because of honey's healing properties. I have a nasty habit of chewing my lips so adding honey just soothes them when I've been having a particularly bad chewing session. Plus it's just nice!  

• Peppermint food flavoring. We are making peppermint lip scrub so a splash of peppermint extract is essential to give that minty smell! 

• A small plastic tub. You can buy these travel size jars from drugstores. I'm using an old Lush lip scrub jar.

• A teaspoon and something small to scoop the scrub into the jar.

• Green food colouring (Optional) It is completely up to you whether you use food colouring. I'll be using green food colour gel to give my scrub a more minty green colour. Adding food colouring to your scrub is completely fine, unless you put in a bucket load of colouring, you won't get green lips after using your minty scrub.  

Ready? Let's go!

• Mix 1tsp Olive oil with your Caster sugar, you want the sugar to be crumbly, not stuck together.

•  Next take 1/2tsp of honey and mix it into the sugar & oil mixture, again making sure it's not too sticky and still has a nice crumbly texture.

• You then want to add a teeny tiny amount of the Peppermint flavoring. I like to put in about 3 drops, but it is completely up to you how minty you want it to smell. Once you've added the flavouring, make sure your mixture sticks together when you press it. It can't be too runny or sticky, just hold its shape once pressure has been applied.

• Once you've mixed in your falvouring you can either finish up and spoon your mixture into your jar (shown in just a second) or you can add a splash of food colouring to spice things up. I like to use gel colouring because it doesn't make the sugar overly wet and gloopy. If you are using normal food colouring, only put about 2-3 drops in, we want to keep that crumbly texture. 

• All that's left to do now is spoon the mixture into your empty jar and pat it down! Voila! 

Have you tried making your own scrub before? What other homemade beauty products would you like to see?